BBC Turn Back Time

Turn Back Time

In November and December last year BBC1 broadcast a six part series on the british high street. Called Turn Back Time it featured a five different families living though eight decades as shop keepers on the high street. We were the bakers family! Have a look at the photographs- we all look tired out because we were! Being a baker in Victorian and Edwardian times and even up to the war was hard physical work for all the family and when you had to live like they did 24 hours a day it was a real eye opener. No baths, hair washes or deodorant until after the war! Thank god we have what we have today!

And it was the same for the other families. No matter what you sold on the high street, it involved long hours, hard work and in purely financial terms little reward. However what we all got was a real feeling of community, living and working together. Thanks to Carl, Debbie, Harry and Saffron our grocer friends, Andrew and Michael the butchers, Simon the blacksmith, Gill the seamstress and the Sandhers who took over our hovel when we moved out. And not forgetting David the DJ from the 70′s and all our customers in Shepton Mallet.

Interestingly we think the basic foodstuffs were better in the past. Not in terms of choice of course, but the way the ingredients were grown, the way it was made, the whole local economy where everyone depended on each other meant that apart from a few unscrupulous individuals, bread was very much a local produce and the baker was a trusted part of the community. However what was different was that Nigel had to be the baker as women were not thought to be tough enough.  You might be pleased to know that Caroline still bakes our bread today. Just as well as Nigel was too handy with the salt!

Look out for more photographs!